This is the draft of Hugo 2016 section of the Puppy Kefuffle Timeline. Once this section is done, I’ll call the timeline done and complete. Any further events, kefuffles etc won’t be included on this timeline.

Suggestions, edits, typo-corrections all welcome. The interval between slates/lists being announced and the nominations being announced is a bit lacking in events. I haven’t included much on the 3SV and EPH+ discussions yet either.

2016/1/1 In response to Steve Davidson’s ‘offer’ to some notable Puppies, Kate Paulk posts a response at the Sad Puppy 4 site pointing out who is currently organising Sad Puppies 4 and detailing how Sad Puppies 4 will operate. – http://sadpuppies4.org/2016/01/01/offer-what-offer/

2016/2/16 John C Wright posts a collation of Vox Day’s recent Rabid Puppy posts saying: “In that spirit, I hereby officially announce in my capacity as the Grand Inquisitor of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors, that the following list is the recommended reading list of our Darkest Lord only, and not a voting slate. These are the recommendations of my editor, Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day, the most hated man in Science Fiction, but certainly the best editor I have had the pleasure to work with.” – http://www.scifiwright.com/2016/02/rabid-puppy-reading-list/

2016/4/26 David Van Dyke posts his reaction to his story being nominated saying: “I’m apolitical about the whole Hugo process and on nobody’s side. I just submitted a story to one of the grand masters of military sci-fi and it got picked up for the anthology, and then nominated. That’s it. No investment in puppies, kitties, gerbils, tortoises or other animals. “ – http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,234899.msg3272548.html#msg3272548

2016/4/27 Larry Correia posts his reaction to the Hugo nominations saying: “All I can really say to the CHORFs is that they had a chance to deal with people like me or Brad, but instead they decided to be a bunch of pricks and hand out wooden assholes while block voting No Award. In the process they insulted disgruntled fans, and proved that they were a bunch of cliquish elitists just like I’d said they were to begin with. “ – http://monsterhunternation.com/2016/04/27/on-the-hugo-award-announcement/

2016/4/27 Alyssa Wong posts her reaction being nominated for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer: “There is no way in hell I’m withdrawing. The fact is, in spite of the Rabid Puppies attempts to lock people like me out of the finalists list through slate voting, some truly deserving folks and their works who weren’t on their slate slipped onto the list anyway “ – http://crashwong.net/post/143533874133/toe-the-line-on-being-a-2016-john-w-campbell

2016/4/27 Eric Flint appeals for calm in reaction to the nominations “ This time around—remember, it’s 2016, not 2015—don’t hyperventilate, don’t work yourself up into a frenzy, don’t overact. Just treat the nominations the same way you would in any other year. Ignore who nominated who because, first, it’s irrelevant; and secondly, if you do you will be falling for a hustle by an idiot like Beale—which makes you an even bigger idiot.” – http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/2016/04/27/but-for-wales/

2016/4/28 Tony C Smith of ‘Tales to Terrify’ podcast posts his reaction to being nominated and discovering they had been part of the Rabid Puppy slate: “Still reeling from the sheer shock and disappointment, we just wanted to let our listeners and the science fiction community know that we did not know we were on the Rabid Puppies slate.” – http://talestoterrify.com/how-our-2016-hugo-nomination-became-a-real-tale-to-terrify/

2016/8/20 The 2016 Hugo Awards are announced. The Fifth Season by N K Jemisin wins best novel. Cat Pictures Please wins best Short Story, Space Raptor Butt Invasion comes third after No Award. Works from Vox Day’s Castalia House are consistently beaten by No Award. – http://www.thehugoawards.org/2016/08/2016-hugo-awards-announced/

[Update: Wrote this yesterday and put it on schedule for later. Woke up this morning to learn that Carrie Fisher has died. I omitted from the review (so it would be a minor surprise for anybody who didn’t know already) that there is a CGI Princess Leia near the very end of the film receiving the plans for the Death Star.]

Well, that was fun in a Blake’s 7 sort of way.

What I liked about the film was it had a certain freedom to it. The story has one simple job: by the end of the plot, the plans for the Death Star have to be on a Rebel spaceship pursued by Darth Vader. How to get to point B is undetermined and indeed where point A is to start with nobody knows. Indeed, the film initially is a bit confused about where A is, flitting from one plane to another. However, after some initial rushing around the galaxy, the story comes together.

Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso, captures a nice sense of both bravado and cynicism as the daughter of the man who designed the Death Star. Her emotional journey isn’t complex but given the number of genre films in which people appear to act incomprehensibly it was nice to have a character whose motivations were personal and direct. Her shift from reluctant rebel to a leader of a commando force is shaped overtly and plausibly by plot events.

The Rebel Alliance is given some genuine depth as an actual alliance – not quite overtly at war with the Empire, split into factions, divided on policy and still hoping to use the Senate to curb the excesses of the Emperor. Forrest Whitaker plays Saw Gerrera, a more fanatical rebel who has split with the Rebel Alliance due to their concerns about his extremism while Diego Luna plays Cassian Andor – an apparently high-ranking Rebel Alliance intelligence officer with a murderous ends-justify-means approach. This is a very dark portrayal of the good guys for Star Wars. It is also the only Star Wars film in which the emphasis is primarily on the Rebel Alliance as an entity.

The CGI gimmickry of resurrecting Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin is somewhat dubious (plus one surprise extra character at the end). However, Darth Vader gets some effective scenes and while tonally very different from A New Hope, the film works as a bridge between the overly shiny and humourless prequels and the original trilogy.

Echoes of The Magnificent Seven and/or the Dirty Dozen in terms of the gathering of the rag-tag collection of rebels. Donnie Yen as Chirrut Îmwe, as a blind ex-Jedi (or maybe just a force sensitive follow of Jedi spirituality) gets both great fight sequences but also adds a more downbeat view of the force as a power. Wen Jiang as Baze Malbus gets less to do but still manages to bring a sense of character to a role that would otherwise be just a guy with a cool accessory for the action-figure version. Riz Ahmed as Bodhi Rook the defecting Imperial pilot also manages to give a sense of a distinct character amid the multiple jumps from planet to planet.

K-2SO is the best though, obviously.

Here is a picture of him wishing he was in a Studio Ghibli film.

Worth seeing? Yes.

Better than the Force Awakens? Um, not really comparable. As it indicates, this is a film in the Star Wars universe not a Star Wars film. It doesn’t follow the same beats as a Star Wars film – which is a good thing because it isn’t constrained by them.

Take the kids? It’s a bit more grown up than your standard Star Wars fare but then again my kids saw Episode 3 when they were tiny and they loved that…

Political? Sure, as Star Wars has always been about people fighting authoritarian imperialists. However, it’s also more realistically political and has a stronger sense of the cost of revolutions, insurgency and rebellions. Unlike the original movie, the use of weapons of mass destruction is shown here to impact actual people. We see the occupied cities that are destroyed and there is a sense of not just that people are killed but that cultures are being destroyed.

You’ve seen it already? Oh, ok here, have another K-2SO picture to cheer you up.

Steven Moffat is many things but one thing he is, in particular, is a writer of romantic comedies. The much-discussed sexism that runs through his work is the sexism that rests on a notion of men and women being intrinsically different but in mutually funny ways from which can spring glib generalities and plot-driving misunderstandings. Moffat’s fascination with people with unusual minds, puzzle plots and with SF/F fiction helps distinguish him from the similar writers such as Richard Curtis. Yet, like Curtis he knows how to play with romantic comedy both subverting it and affirming the genre at the same time.

In the 2016 Christmas Special, Moffat lays out a gentle Richard Curtis-like romantic comedy but about superheroes and alien brain parasites. No puzzles and an evil invasion plot from the bad guys that echoed both Watchmen and the Aliens of London episode from series 1 of the reboot. A wise choice that made for a funny and light episode.

The episode was not a deconstruction of the superhero genre but played the tropes simply and straight but also at a relatively shallow level. Primarily a play on the Clark Kent/Lois Lane, secret identity, romance angle but with an added play on romantic comedy trope of the woman who somehow can’t see the man she actually is looking for is standing right next to her.

Capaldi has fun in a double act with Matt Lucas as Nardole who we last saw in Christmas 2015 being decapitated by a cyborg.

I’d hoped that we’d get some twist on the sinister-German character (Dr Sim played by actual German actor Aleksandar Jovanovic) but while nicely acted the role was purely for the purpose of rolling out the cliche. Yes, probably intended to be an ironic nod but 2016 is not a good year to roll out British casual euro-stereotypes.

It’s fun and colourful but with an emphasis on film and TV as a measure of notability. However, its use of timelines provides a neat way of showing the development of particular properties across different media.

1 pint 12% alcohol – tastes like being hit on the head by a chocolate pudding. Drank this on Christmas Eve while watching a re-run of the 2014 Dr Who Christmas Special. 12% puts it in wine territory but it felt stronger.